Navigating Writer Life with Jami Attenberg 🧭🖋️
Musings, Meanderings and Methods from one of my favourite writers.
Hello, and happy Wednesday!
Dropping in with a little off-schedule post today, on account of some wise words to share from none other than…
!I have been reading Jami’s work for about seven years, starting with the fiction title All Grown Up, which I felt drawn to one day during a charity shop bookshelf browse. That led me to her newsletter
, and the pull to dabble over the years in the wondrous and widespread #1000wordsofsummer - this year having completed it in full for the first time.For anyone who may be new to her work:
Jami Attenberg is the New York Times bestselling author of nine books, including The Middlesteins, All Grown Up and a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home. She is also the creator of the annual online group writing accountability project #1000wordsofsummer, which inspired the recently published USA Today bestseller 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round. Her tenth book, publishing on September 24, 2024, is A Reason to See You Again. She lives in New Orleans. You can find her online regularly at Craft Talk.
Reading Jami’s non-fiction is to experience generosity, wisdom, and passion. Her memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home, is a heartfelt insight into the life of someone who is dedicated to the craft, and isn’t afraid to learn and share lessons, applicable to us all, along the way.
Her fiction titles meanwhile are funny, relatable, and offer a unique delve into what it is to be human, particularly in relation to others. With a new book coming out this autumn, A Reason to See You Again, the process of writing which has been documented intermittently through
, there’s perhaps no better time to read some musings, meanderings and methods from this writer’s life.
Through her career Jami has found a writing community, opened it up, and invited everyone in, to share experiences and offer encouragement.
This latest post is just another example of that. We’ve landed here, with Jami sharing her musings, meandering and methods, exclusively for
, after she put out a call earlier in the summer inviting smaller Substackers (her own following being around 56k readers) to email over three questions for her to answer, should anyone be interested.Interested?! I leapt at the chance.
And so, read on for a few snippets of wisdom on the themes and curiosities we explore on
, from a prolific wordsmith who knows a thing or two…Thank you Jami for the opportunity to connect in this way!
Could you start by sharing some musings on what it means to "be a writer" today, and how that differs, if it all, to when you were starting out in your writing career?
I know you weren't asking this, but just to be clear, doing the actual writing is the same, nothing has changed for me in that respect. I still sit down every day and do the work and there's no way around it.
In terms of writing as a career or as a business, I do think of myself as my own small business at times, or my own institution. I am the one who generates the work that is sold, and I am the one who determines my own schedule. And at the beginning I had more of a thought of myself purely as an artist. Once I became a full-time writer, my perception of myself necessarily changed a bit because my job changed.
My first book came out in 2006, and I had a strong online presence even then, or at least compared to other authors I knew. So that hasn't changed for me, although it has changed for many other authors who either feel a pressure to be more online or find themselves enjoying it organically. We are all hustling much, much more for things like asking for pre-orders or writing essays to promote ourselves, things like that. I'm writing this to you with a few weeks to go until my book comes out and I can tell you that there's just less press to get. There are fewer (as in not very many) review sections. It's just harder to get your name out there. And we're trying to get the attention of a distracted population.
But we, as writers, all are able to reach out to each other more and share information. I feel a greater sense of community these days. I didn't go to graduate school so I could not develop a cohort that way. But now I feel like the internet is my cohort.
In your memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home (which I loved!), you share a lot about your meanderings around the US, and really, the world, as you sought to build your life as a writer.
Thinking back through those years, before you settled on building a home in New Orleans, what's one piece of advice you'd share for others navigating their own journey to "home"?
I think "home" is for you and no one else. It's lovely if you can build it with another person, of course, and I am not trying to discount that. But what I mean is you don't have to live by anyone else's rules or definitions of what your home should look like or where it should be. I think once I understood that things got a lot easier to find my way to where I felt most comfortable and happiest.
Your memoir also detailed your commitment to writing while working all sorts of jobs to pay the bills, before your dedication to the craft paid off financially.
For others trying to dedicate time and energy to a creative practice, while feeling constrained by the demands of the corporate world, or balancing several roles at once to make ends meet, is there one method or approach you can recommend to help with this?
Perhaps something you've previously shared in your #1000 Words book, or newsletter, that's received positive feedback from others?
What I've been talking about a lot lately is assessing what your distractions are, making an actual list of them, and then removing or at least adjusting them. Because I promise you there's at least one thing on that list you can cross off that list which can be replaced by writing. It's usually something like watching Real Housewives. They last an hour, right? So there's an hour to write right there. I know I'm making it sound overly simple but...it actually might be.
And what a great place to end; with an encouragement, or invitation perhaps, to think about what we might be overcomplicating in our writing, or even, in life. I’ll let you ponder what it may mean for you…
Wishing I was in NYC to celebrate Jami’s #1000Words book earlier this summer, but having fun connecting two of the greats to hang out there 📚💫
If you enjoyed this conversation and are keen to show some support without a paid subscription, a Ko-fi coffee is always appreciated. ☕
Ohhhhhh HOW COOL that Jami made that offer. I am SO GLAD you didn't talk yourself out of accepting. I love that you did this!
Great Q&A!